Local Inequality and Support for Right-wing Populism in Britain

2025 European Political Science Association Conference

Zach Dickson

London School of Economics

What Drives Support for Right-Wing Populism?

Two dominant explanations often compete:

  • Economic Grievance: A rebellion of the “left behind,” fueled by globalization, automation, job insecurity, and economic dislocation

  • Cultural Backlash: A reaction against progressive values, immigration, and perceived threats to national identity and traditional norms

Argument: It’s About Relative Status Decline

  • A key mechanism common to both economic and cultural explanations is relative status decline

  • It’s not just about absolute deprivation, but the feeling that others around you are getting a better deal

    • This can be driven by both economic and cultural factors (e.g., income, education, cultural values)
    • Can also be triggered by visible inequality, especially in local contexts

  • Hypothesis: A rise in local inequality, made salient through housing, increases support for populist right parties.

Research Design

Goal: Create a dynamic, small-area measure of wealth inequality

  • Data & Measurement:
    • Use detailed housing data to estimate housing prices over time
      • 27 million property transactions in the UK
      • ML model (XGBoost) predicts house values annually
    • Calculate local inequality measures
      • GINI coefficient of house prices annually for each local electoral ward
    • Extensive validation (see paper for details)
      • Correlates with other measures of inequality (e.g., income, wealth)
      • Robust to different model specifications and data sources

Local Inequality in the UK

2022 Electoral Ward Inequality

Outcomes of Interest

Focus on populist right parties in the UK: UKIP and Reform UK

  • We pair data with granular attitudinal and electoral data on populist support
    • Create panel of UKIP/Reform UK vote share in local elections (2006-2021)
    • Individual vote intention from Understanding Society panel study (2008-2023)

Empirical Strategies

Three complementary methods to test the hypothesis:

  • Two-Way Fixed Effects:
    • Analyzes how changes in inequality within a ward over time affect vote share, controlling for national trends and stable local characteristics.
  • Event Study (Difference-in-Differences):
    • Treats the construction of a new, high-value property as a “shock” that increases local inequality.
    • Traces the dynamic effect on populist support in the years before and after the shock.
  • Instrumental Variable (Shift-Share):
    • Uses plausibly random variation from the “Right-to-Buy” policy to isolate the causal effect of inequality from other confounding factors.

Key Findings

Across three research designs and two datasets, a one-standard-deviation increase in local house price inequality is associated with a 2 to 5 percentage point increase in UKIP/Reform UK’s vote share.

  • Two-Way Fixed Effects: 2-3 percentage points in vote share
  • Two-Way Fixed Effects: 2-3 percentage points in vote intention
  • Instrumental Variable (2SLS): 3-5 percentage points in vote share
  • Event Study: 2-4 percentage points in years 1-2

The Effect of an Inequality “Shock”

Effects of High-value Properties on Support for Populist Right Party

Conclusion: Local Status Threat Matters

Main Takeaway: Salient, localized inequality—made visible through the housing market—is a driver of support for the populist right in Britain.

  • Feelings of being “left behind” are often rooted in immediate, local comparisons, not just abstract national statistics
  • Relative status threat links both economic and cultural factors to populism.

Dickson & Hobolt: Local Inequality and Populism